However, the Townhall took a weird twist when a handful of Facebook’s more high profile users, including Stephen Hawking, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Arianna Huffington, chimed in with their own questions for the Facebook boss. In the literal sense of the word, the conversation was the most overwhelming of the bunch. It’s hard to imagine this kind of public interaction, between Zuckerberg and one of the world’s greatest scientists, taking place in a world without the Internet, or without Facebook. And it hints at how Zuckerberg thinks about human interactions: As a universal code that transcends cultural and political differences, one that simply needs to be broken. Hawking, Schwarzenegger and Huffington kicked things off by asking Zuckerberg about his view on science, workouts and journalism, respectively.
Hawking, noting his own interest in a unified theory of gravity, asked: “Which of the big questions in science would you like to know the answer to and why?” Zuckerberg responded within minutes, saying: “That’s a pretty good one! I’m most interested in questions about people. What will enable us to live forever? How do we cure all diseases? How does the brain work? How does learning work and how we can allow humans to learn a million times more? I’m also inquisitive about whether there is a basic mathematical law underlying human social relationships that governs the balance of who and what we all care about”.
Schwarzenegger had a much more practical question like how does he find time to squeeze working out into his busy schedule? And, P.S., “will the machines win?” Huffington, on the other hand wanted to know how storytelling format would evolve in the future. Zuckerberg also answered several questions from non-famous Facebook users, including one lengthy answer on the future of Facebook. While most people use text and photos to share in Facebook, the CEO said he sees that quickly evolving to video, virtual reality and eventually to a sci-fi-sounding future when “we’ll have the power to share our full sensory and emotional experience with people whenever we would like.” Next Zuckerberg and the Terminator discussed about pumping iron and the question why Zuckerberg invented the poke. Facebook’s plan for fake intelligence in a lot of ways resembles Google’s task to key the entire world’s information. Computers in the future will be a lot better at recognizing on their own what they’re looking at, which isn’t the case today.
And lastly, Zuckerberg addressed what has been a permanent flashpoint for its users: That its “real-name” policy can rob some people of their privacy, particularly when it comes to sexual orientation. Zuckerberg’s four-paragraph explanation of Facebook’s real-name policy ends with a fascinating explanation: “real name,” as far as he’s concerned, simply means “the name you want to go by.”
You can read all of Zuckerberg’s answers here. The CEO said he would be hosting another Q&A session soon — no word on if we’ll be seeing more celebrity questions though.
